Rachel's 3rd Birthday

Opening presents and eating birthday cake (pink cake with strawberries on top, by request):

Playing at the park and cooling off afterwards:

A Visit from the Hirschis

My sister Eliza drove down from Dallas with her three kids (Shayne, Bradshaw, and Paul). Her husband Brent couldn't come because of school. Liza and I had a great time together (as always), and the kids loved being able to play with their cousins.



Cousins on the couch - Oliver, Rachel, Paul, Shayne, Tristan, Lizzy, and Bradshaw



Cousins on the couch making funny faces


Oliver, Tristan, and Shayne having fun in the playroom


Drawing pictures together


Oliver reading to Shayne

We went swimming almost every day while Liza was here, so we got a lot of fun pictures:

"Our Special Meeting"

My sister Liza has been the hair expert while she's been here. She did Rachel's hair in a fancy braid-pony thing this morning, and Rachel is now completely in love with her.

I took Rachel on her "special day" today, and she requested that Liza come. She said she wanted to have a special day with just me, Liza, and her, and she wanted to call it "our special meeting".

Liza couldn't come, so Rachel and I went and got an ice-cream cone at McDonalds. Rachel kept sighing and saying, "I wish Liza could have come and then we could have pretended it was a real meeting."

I'll have to learn some hair techniques I guess.

Superheroes

We have had all sorts of super hero activities and dressing up going on around here. Lizzy found the toilet seat all by herself (see picture above). When Rachel didn't need it anymore I stuck it in a little crevice next to our dryer, and I guess Lizzy spotted it back there and thought it would make a good necklace. She pulled it out and put it on all by herself, and came walking proudly out of the laundry room, acting like she was just so cool and everyone was going to be jealous of her beautiful toilet necklace. She strutted around with it on for quite awhile. I kept trying to put it away, and she just kept going back to retrieve it. I guess I need to find a new hiding spot.

More superhero pictures:

Superheroes doing the Ghostbusters dance:

Okay, so they could all use a little work on their dance moves. At least they seem to have mastered bouncing up and down, twirling, crashing into each other, and somersaults.

"You're the best friend I have ever seen!"

I think Rachel must be buttering me and Daniel up for something. The last few weeks she has been extra fond of saying random things like, "Mom, you're so nice", and "I can't believe how nice Dad is", and "Mom, you're the best friend I have ever seen" and "Mom and Dad, you guys are the best parents I have ever seen in my whole life."

For example, as I was writing the above sentence, Rachel started bringing me in little letter magnets that she was pretending were treats. She then said, "Mom, I'm just bringing you lots and lots of treats because you're my best friend." And then as she walked out she said, "I just decided to make you really happy. Can you just not believe how many treats I'm giving you?

I'm not sure where any of this is coming from. I think she just likes to be dramatic about her feelings toward us. I guess I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Now she just walked in again to ask if I still can't believe it, and to remind me that nobody sent us these treats - she just brought them to me because she thought I might love them.

This is all very fun. I've never had so many letter magnet treats before.

Everyone Does

Tonight Tristan and Oliver were discussing the height of different dinosaurs, specifically sauropods (longnecks for any of you who aren't well-read on dinosaurs).

Oliver asked me if there were any sauropods whose body, not including their neck, was as tall as our house. I was kind of hum-hawing, and ended up deciding that maybe there were.

Tristan said, "well, I'm pretty sure there were, because when we lived at Franklin Park you told us that there were sauropods whose heads were taller than our whole building, and if their heads were up that high, I'm guessing their bodies had to be at least as high as our house now."

So first of all, I was surprised that he remembered something I told him so long ago and has been counting it as fact, and secondly, I was impressed with his reasoning skills.

I started laughing a little, and he said, "What?". I said, "Tristan, you've got a brain in your head." He replied, "Well, of course, Mom - everyone does."

Fourth of July 2007

We had a fun 4th of July. We invited Bill Bates over and did a teeny little BBQ on our back porch, using a little mini-grill that we got for our wedding over seven years ago.

Daniel had bought far too many fireworks, forgetting that we still had several left over from last year and the year before when he also bought far too many, so we loaded everyone up in the car and went off in search of a place to explode things. We ended up driving around for 1 1/2 hours before we found a place that it was allowed. Thank goodness for the DVD player in the van. I put on a movie for the kids and they didn't mind the drive.

Once we finally found a spot we had a lot of fun. We were on a little dead-end road right next to a field of cows. They (the cows) watched for a while and then got a little annoyed at all the noise and walked down to the other end of the field. There were lots of tank battles and exploded army guys and little fires built and general male excitement about blowing things up. There aren't really any restrictions here about what you can do, so lots of ours were flying-up in the air ones, which was fun.

The kids loved all the explosions, although Oliver's favorite part was at the very end when we gathered up all the trash and set it on fire. Oliver kept trying to set fire to everything with his sparklers.

The most bizarre thing happened when we were about to leave. We had all of the kids in the van, all strapped in, and we were anxious to get out of there because Rachel and Lizzy were both super tired and crying. A truck full of people had pulled up to our same spot, planning to use it when we left, and all of a sudden a very large and very muddy dog came running up to our van and jumped inside. It scrambled back in between the two benches, much to the alarm of all the children. It was trying to jump up on Tristan and scratching him all over, and he couldn't escape because he was buckled in. Then it wedged itself in between the benches and just stayed there. The guy who owned it came walking up kind of laughing, but we had seen how muddy the dog was, and we didn't think it was funny. Plus, all four of the kids were panicking now and the girls were screaming. Daniel asked the guy to get his dog out, and he said, "oh, he just wants a ride." Ha, ha.

THEN, for 10 minutes at least, he tried unsuccessfully to get his dog out, acting the whole time like it was our fault. I couldn't believe it. The dog was so fat it had kind of gotten stuck, and the guy said he didn't want to pull on his legs because it might hurt him. So he just kept saying, "come on, get out." Daniel and I were getting more and more frustrated, but we didn't know how to get him out, either, and didn't know if it was a biting dog. The guy kept saying, "well, maybe we should take all the seats out of the car." As if that would be easier than just pulling it out. It was so weird.

Finally, we took the girls out of their seats and folded up the front bench. The guy still wanted to just convince his dog to get out, so we told him he needed to immediately climb in and grab the dog by it's collar and get it out of there. He finally got him out, but didn't even apologize and acted like we were over-reacting for even caring that a strange dog was stuck in our car and preventing us from leaving.

Bragging About the Kids

Every once in a while I write little updates in my journal about the kids. I like my kids a lot and think they're great, so I apologize if these updates just sound like a lot of bragging. Feel free to skip them if you're not interested.

Tristan

Tristan is enjoying his summer break. He is 6 ½ yeard old now. He loves watching Planet Earth and Man vs. Wild shows – he loves learning new things about the Earth, animals, and nature. He likes making projects, playing flag football, and swimming. He loves his goggles and he has a great time diving for pool toys under the water.

He is very logical and smart, and has a good memory. Sometimes he's a little bit of a "smart mouth" and we've had to talk to him about not talking back. He just questions a lot of the things I tell him now.

He’s a good older brother and helps me out a lot with the younger kids. I love talking with Tristan, because he has such a mature view of the world, and so many fun ideas.

Oliver

Oliver will turn 5 in a couple of months. He is an amazing artist, and draws all the time. He loves anything to do with volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, and the solar system. He is an excellent reader – he can sound out words very quickly, and seems to read things by sight very well.

He just recently discovered the joy of swimming underwater, although he is still using his floaty suit – I would love to teach him how to swim, but when I take all four kids, it’s too hard for me to watch all of them, so I feel safer if he’s in his floaty suit. I bought him some goggles at Wal-Mart, and he loves swimming around looking under the water.

Oliver seems to be getting more mature lately. He has a great sense of humor and loves funny things.

Rachel

Rachel will turn 3 at the end of this month. She is such a character. She is still as dramatic as ever, and a little precocious, I think – she is an exceptionally good talker for her age, talking often and using a grown-up vocabulary. Her new favorite word (it fits her dramatic nature perfectly) is “definitely”. She says it all the time – “Oh, Mom, you definitely will have to clean me up after lunch”, “I definitely will want to have banana splits on Sunday”, “We’ll definitely have to go to Schlitterbahn again", "You definitely will need to spray me off with the hose when we get home from our walk." I can’t even keep track of how many times she uses that word daily.

Another favorite of hers, which I know she stole from Ollie, is "for the rest of my life?" As in, "Whaaaaaaaaaaat? I can't wear that shirt ever again for the rest of my life?!!!!" She uses it for things that don't even HAVE lives, like her sheets when I have to wash them - "Now that pink blanket can't ever be on my bed for the rest of its life?" She also uses it in a very teenager-y way: "Mom, don't worry, it's, like, okay that we had to come home from the pool. It's not like I can't go back for the rest of my life."

Other dramatic phrases she uses: “oh, my heck!”, “holy shnikeys!”, and “totally!”. She is really funny to listen to.

She’s a pretty good girl, and has recently become my “okay girl” – she loves to shout “okay” after I ask her to do anything.

She loves horses, the color red, Schlitterbahn, anything girly, dancing, princesses, going on Special Days, snack time, swimming, pizza, banana splits, hot dogs, craisins, planning her birthday cake (right now she wants a red jello cake with strawberry sauce, caramel, and craisins on it – but it changes daily), planning her wedding cake (so far it will have chocolate sauce, caramel, strawberry sauce, strawberries, and peaches on it), parties, pretending to go to parties, playing with toy food, talking about any kind of dessert, and looking at picture slideshows on the computer. She also likes playing with the boys, and pretending she’s Arwen from Lord of the Rings. She loves to be a “fighter-girl”.

She is the one child in our family that nobody believes belongs to us – she looks so different from everybody else. I think she looks like Anita. She has really fair skin, great big blue eyes, and curly blond hair.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth turned one a few weeks ago. She is such a funny little girl. These are some words I would use to describe her: reckless, ferocious (Daniel’s favorite word), destroyer (Oliver’s favorite word), cheerful, goofy, beautiful, smiley, loud. She loves baths, swimming, tackling/wrestling, Dad (she really loves Daniel), playing the “pointing game”, pat-a-cake, trot-trot, playing upstairs with the big kids, and especially getting into all the cupboards in the house and emptying everything out onto the floor.

She knows the sign-language for eat, nurse, drink, more, all done, and night-night, and she’s really good at signing to me what she wants. She is starting to say a few words: Dada, Mama, uh (uh-oh), guy, Tris (Tristan), Jesus, hi, shoes, and her most recent favorite – caw (clock). Whenever we walk into a room, she looks for a clock on the wall and then she proudly points and yells out “caw!” She also learned how to say “baby” a few months ago, but she won’t say it anymore.

She is a good sleeper, always tries to bite people, likes to growl/yell/make noise, doesn’t like me to hold Rachel (she’ll try to push her off my lap and bite her), and she has a big appetite – she is always signing “eat, eat” to me.

Rachel loves to call Elizabeth a “goofball”, and she really is – she loves to stand up and then dive down to the ground and roll around, just to make people laugh. She also recently started liking “girly” things – she loves shoes and she always pulls different shoes out of our shoe bucket and tries to put them on. The other day I found her up in Rachel’s room all by herself, trying on all of Rachel’s necklaces. She was very proud of herself because she had put on about 7 or 8 necklaces all by herself. This morning she found a necklace in my cupboard, put it on, and then walked into my closet and looked at herself in the mirror, smiling the whole time. She seems young to me to be doing that.

She recently learned how to walk, and she walks all over the place now, although she still falls a lot. She does not have very much hair, but she has beautiful dark eyes, and a darling big goofy smile with really cute dimples. She is not shy yet, and she loves showing off for people and making friends at church.

Elizabeth carrying her train. Ever since she learned how to walk, she loves carrying big heavy things around. I don't know why. She thinks she's very strong.

July

I can’t believe it’s July already. This year has started to go by so quickly. We’re getting more used to living here in Pflugerville now that we’ve been here for a year. So far this summer has been pretty fun. It hasn’t gotten super hot yet, because we’ve had the wettest June in history here, I think. There has been a lot of flooding in the Austin area and up in Dallas, but not right by our house.

My most exciting news is that my good friend Karen Bates (lived across from us at Franklin Park in Provo; husband Bill was in the MBA program with Daniel) is moving to Pflugerville in a few weeks. Bill got a job in Austin, and they both flew out a few weeks ago and stayed at our house while they looked for houses. They found one about 5 minutes away from us, so they’ll be in our same ward. I’m spoiled from Franklin Park, though, because I really wanted them to move onto our same street. I would love it if our kids could walk back and forth between houses like they used to, and go to the same school (their kids will go to Rowe Elementary, not Murchison). Oh, well. I’m just glad they’ll be here in Pflugerville.